Friday, October 17, 2014

Woodstock Film Festival: "Why I'm Not on Facebook"

I walked into the Bearsville Theatre and saw my friend Annie Nocenti. "I'm introducing the film," she explained to me. Then she turned to a boyish blond man and said, "This is Brant Pinvidic, the director of Why I'm Not on Facebook."

"This is Sparrow; he's a local legend," Annie told Brant.

"You look like a local legend," Brant told me.

"Really?" I responded.

"Oh, yeah," he went on. "If I was told to pick out a local legend in the room, I would choose you, no doubt."

Immediately I liked this fellow. Furthermore, perhaps Brant's talent for flattery works in his favor as a documentarian (or more precisely a "film essayist" — I believe low-budget projects like this are now called "essay films"). How else would he convince a mother who was unfriended (on Facebook) by her daughter to confide her pain in him? (Why did her daughter unfriend her mom? Because she told an off-color joke on her daughter's page. And what was the joke? A Chinese man and a Chinese woman go to bed for the first time. The man says, "Why don't we try 69?" and the woman replies, "Beef with broccoli?") Why else would an Irish ladies man reveal his methods of Facebook seduction? Or a burglar explain how easy it is to find victims through Facebook profiles? (The first question after the movie was over: "How did you find the burglar?" The answer: " Craigslist.")

This was the World Premiere of Why I'm Not on Facebook! And I was there!

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